Author Archive

Welcome back! Last month I told you about the stigma behind the word “flipping” and how some are considering it to be illegal. Flipping houses is not illegal. Fraud is.

O.K., Back To Flipping.

What does lender fraud have to do with flipping and the stigma some of the media have placed on it? Some lenders have had so many loans default on lower priced properties sold by investors it’s opened their eyes and made them cautious, and justifiably so, if I were a lender making loans at 80%-100% of the purchase price, I’d be cautious too. In fact, I’d be paranoid, but then again I’d be neither because I’d never even consider doing it.

I have no way of proving this, but if I had to guess, I’d say 75% of all loans closed to fund low income home buyers contain some kind of false statement or fraud. Read More→

Oh No! All this time you’ve been telling me I could make a killing buying & selling (flipping) houses and now you’re telling me it’s illegal, Ron?

Well, sort of! But before you get all upset, I’d better explain. Don’t worry; you’re not going to jail. Here’s the deal. Illegal flipping is indeed illegal. But first, let’s define flipping because it is a misunderstood term, sort of like the term “nothing down.” When I say you can buy houses with nothing down, I mean you’re not using your own money. That doesn’t mean the seller doesn’t get money. Sometimes they don’t and sometimes they get cashed out. But, it is NOT your money; it’s a “nothing down” deal.

When you take over a loan “subject to” the mortgage, and the seller doesn’t want any money, it’s a nothing down deal. When you pay all cash but borrow the money from a private lender, it’s still considered a nothing down deal. Thousands of people don’t believe in the nothing down philosophy and aren’t doing real estate because they simply don’t understand the term, and therefore they’re convinced they can’t buy houses without their own money. Their loss. A closed mind and an open mouth will keep you broke and working for those who are willing to learn. Read More→

I’m sure you’ve noticed when I sign off, I prefer “To your quantum leap.” People often ask me what I mean by that or how to have a quantum leap. The only way I know to answer is to “keep fertilizing your crop.” Let me explain.

You must ask yourself certain questions and continuously analyze what you’re doing at every moment. Whether you’re young or old, what are you doing to fertilize your crop? Is every day the same or are you taking on new challenges and learning new stuff? Are you playing not to lose or playing to win? Does your seed have a chance to grow and if it does, will it produce a crop worth having? Are you spending so much time making a living you can’t take time to get rich? If you are rich, are you complacent and bored or are you putting it on the line to stay in the game and win big? Do you look forward to tomorrow because it’s just another day full of problems? Have you had some major set- backs with your finances or health that you’re letting take you out of the game, or are you playing no matter what?

Everyone faces adversity at some point, many more than others. Yet, successful people just keep ticking. They keep fertilizing their crop and looking for new harvest. They survive the test of time because they refuse to quit when things get tough and because they love what they do to the point it becomes their life… their station.

You never know at what point in your life a major turning point will take place that catapults you further in one year than all previous years combined. I’ve seen that happen a lot lately with some of my students and in my own life. Read More→

I recently conducted the first two days of one of my boot camps and shortly thereafter spent two hours on the phone doing one-on-one calls with students. There’s a common mistake I see students making over and over again, and it doesn’t seem to matter if they are new or been around awhile. That mistake is: doing everything they can to feel busy except the critical things required to stay in business.

It’s so easy to be busy. Anyone can do it, and most people would say they’re very busy almost all the time. I hear things like: “If only I had more time, the days just aren’t long enough, so much to do and so little time.” A rat in a circular cage is busy running in circles, but getting nowhere. Pretty soon he has a heart attack and dies. Being busy will not make you rich. In fact, it can have the opposite effect and prevent you from ever achieving wealth. Don’t get me wrong. Rich people are busy too. I’m very busy most of the time with something always chasing my attention. There’s always an endless supply of things to work on that suck up my time. The difference is I constantly and consciously work on…only those items I can’t delegate and are worthy of my attention.

Minutia is a deadly disease that steals away the most productive time of your life and robs you of the great things you could accomplish…if you only had time. Well, I suppose I don’t have to tell you that we all have the same amount of time in a day and no bonus hours will ever be added. Rich people and poor people alike are granted the same opportunity to turn that time into greatness or waste it the same way, day in and day out until they’re dead. Read More→

Last month we began talking about commercial properties. This month we will continue talking about opportunities you can find with small apartments, self-storage, large apartments, shopping centers, office buildings and industrial.

I think of my friend, Lance Edwards, who specializes in small apartments. Small apartments meaning anything from 4 to 100 units. In fact, Lance will be at our upcoming boot camp in August, and he will be at the summit in February. Lance is very successful in that small apartment niche.

And there’s self-storage. My friend, Scott Myers, is the king of self-storage, he has hundreds of units starting from scratch with no money or credit and has built an empire by buying and redeveloping or by buying land and building self-storage units on it, which has always been a hot commercial component in the market because even when people use their homes, they still need a place to store their Junk. Did you know that self-storage is the only type that you can literally get 100% financing on? That’s how much the banks think of self-storage. Scott will also be at my commercial boot camp, and he is a wealth of information when it comes to the self-storage business. Read More→

I want to take this opportunity to talk to you a little bit about commercial property. I’ve got a lot of experience in commercial property from developing vacant land to income-producing properties of all kinds. My favorite is development.

But first, let’s talk about what is commercial property. And, in the world of residential it’s anything over 4 units. So, a 4-plex is not commercial, but a 5-plex is considered commercial. And, some of the properties that I have dealt with actually had income from tenants. I’ve had office buildings, I’ve had apartments, I’ve had retail and two or three other things, heck, I even had a mobile home park at one time, and over the years I’ve pretty much dabbled in everything.

I’ve specialized in nothing in the commercial world because I’m more of a generalist than a specialist, and of course we could have this discussion for hours. I think the smartest thing to do is to be a specialist because you can get good at one thing and not have to do so much and go through the learning curve that I had to go through. Read More→

It was March 12th, 1982, when I had a decision to make, and it didn’t seem like a very big one. You see, there was a seminar coming to town called “How to Buy Real Estate with No Money Down,” and it caught my attention because I certainly had none and didn’t want to continue doing what I had been doing for most of my life. I believe I saw the commercial on television, and after about the third time it aired I got to thinking about it and said, “Well, gosh, what have I got to lose. I know it’s a scam, I know they’re full of crap, but I might as well go down and check it out. Maybe there is something there, maybe I can find a way to get out of this mechanic job and make a little money for a change that lasts more than 15 minutes.”

Now, this was not an easy decision because I was going to miss my favorite television show “Dallas” with J.R. Ewing. For me to miss J.R. in order to go to the seminar was a big, big deal. We laugh about it now, but it wasn’t so funny back then because J.R. was the guy that gave me hope. He’s the first exposure I had to see what it was like to be very rich. I couldn’t really see myself as J.R. at that time, but I certainly wanted to be like him. I’m not sure I wanted to be as mean as he was. Of course, some people will say I am. I certainly wanted to have his money and his power. Read More→

I’ve been in a few businesses in my life, still have a few and probably will until I check into the nursing home, and maybe even after.

When comparing buying and selling houses to other businesses, the contrast is so big, sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if all small business owners were exposed to my training before they opened their businesses.

Let’s take a look and compare to my restaurant.

You can start real estate immediately with no money, no credit and no risk and expect to make a profit within the first month or two.

The restaurant required several months looking for a location I had to build out. Then, I signed a long lease with a $7,500 deposit (albeit non-recourse). Then it took 10 months and several hundred thousand dollars to get it opened and a massive amount of my time. As to the profit…it’s been a serious negative and will take many more months to break even. Then we’ll discuss a profit, maybe.

Your real estate business has no employees, only a virtual assistant or two. That means no payroll alligator to suck you dry and no employees to manage or account for and no regulations strangling the life out of your business. Read More→

Last month, I taught you about two ways to make money in real estate. I covered retailing and wholesaling. Those two methods generally involve buying houses that are in need of repairs at a deeply discounted price. This month, I will teach you about the other two ways to profit in real estate that is considered to be the Pretty House Business.

Lease-Options – Many people are not aware you do not have to buy a property to profit from it. In the case of lease-options, we lease it from the seller with an option to buy it at some predetermined price and term. Our objective then is to install another tenant-buyer in it, sublease it for a higher price and monthly payment, then collect a non-refundable option deposit from our buyer. In my case, the minimum is usually $10,000 except on a few very low end houses where I’ll accept about $5,000. This deposit never gets returned to the buyer if they do not close. It does, however, get applied to their down payment. But if they move out of the house and don’t close on it they lose the deposit. That’s made real clear up front, and since all of our transactions are closed with an attorney, it’s made clear at the lease-option closing as well. Read More→

“Would you like to buy a home of your own,
but don’t have the big down payment or credit?”

Real estate is a vehicle that cannot only provide you big checks within a few days but also a monthly residual income and a big backend payday. It can retire you so you’ll never have to worry about what the government will pay you when you become a senior and don’t want to work anymore, and the best part is you can make a lot of the money tax-free using your Roth IRA.

The problem is most people believe it takes money and credit to buy real estate and that you need a license or experience. None of that is true. I’ve been teaching people how to buy and sell houses for over 30 years now and to this day I buy 4-6 per month without using any of my own money or credit with one part time assistant and a couple of virtual assistants to get all the work done. I literally spend less than five hours a month in the real estate business to manage this very profitable income stream. It is truly a full time income with a part time effort, which is the way I like all my businesses to produce and assume you do to. Read More→

There are certain expenses a real estate entrepreneur will have in the business, and the more it ramps up, the more these expenses will increase along with revenue.

Fortunately for us, our overhead is extremely small. And when I say extremely, let me do a few comparisons for you:

When my restaurant was open, my break-even was approximately $100,000 per month. That’s just what it took to keep the doors open, including all the costs inherent in a restaurant and most other businesses like labor, insurance, utilities, product, etc. The food alone was $.40 of every dollar that came through the door. That’s a tough nut to crack for any business, especially when you’re dealing with small numbers like those found on your dinner check. There were many times I wish I could sell a filet mignon for $10,000 like we get out of houses with little overheard and very little work.

In the restaurant business, we’re open for lunch and dinner most of the time. There were always at least 12-15 people on duty with over 50 employees total, open seven days a week, and a manager or assistant manager had to be there 100% of the time. If that manager happens to be the boss, that pretty much sucks up that life. Read More→

Well, it’s been over three years now since ACTS came into the world, and so much has changed since its origination in October of 2011. If you’re not aware of what ACTS means, it stands for Assignments of Contracts and Terms System. It has changed the business of a lot of my students throughout the country and added a lot of additional revenue into their lives, including my own.

However, some people think ACTS is all about over leveraged houses, which is not correct. In fact, ACTS pertains to any kind of terms deals with the seller that can be assigned to an owner occupant tenant buyer, thus the term Assignments of Contracts and Terms System.

Today, I rarely do an overleveraged property because it seems like the number of them is continually declining. In fact, the last time I looked, about 17% of the properties in America were over leveraged according to USA Today. Today, I deal more with free and clear properties and those who have a mortgage with some equity on them. I buy these properties either through owner financing or on a lease purchase. Then, I either install a tenant buyer in them or sell them with owner financing. You will have to decide which one you should do, but I’ll show you how to determine what’s right for you in your area and your personal business objectives. Read More→